Subject: Student Conceptual Understanding of Newtonian Physics Across Different Introductory Courses at UMN

Engineering based introductory physics differs from biology based introductory physics in the UMN Physics department in both content and class makeup. Performance on a concept inventory was tested across 23 classrooms with a total of 2290 students, and it was found that, after controlling for student gender, initial concept inventory score, and initial math proficiency, there was no difference in student performance on the post-test of the concept inventory between classes. A gender gap was found in the data- the performance of women was, on average, less than men on the post-test, though the gap varied significantly, suggesting that there is variation in how the gender gap manifests in different classrooms. This talk will go through the data collection, analysis methods, and implications of these results.